Sasha taq(w)šablu LaPointe is not Suquamish, but she is a descendant of two local tribes, the Nooksack and Upper Skagit tribes. To my delight, I discovered in the book that Sasha is the great-granddaughter of Vi taq(w)šablu Hilbert, a renowned storyteller who in large part helped recover the Lushootseed language of the coastal tribes before her passing in 2008. I interviewed Hilbert for an early issue of The Raven Chronicles, around 1991, and am continually struck by the importance of the role she played in language and cultural recovery. This is especially clear to me as I work with others of my tribe, the Ópata Nation, to recover and re-birth a language that has been all but obliterated by other languages and interests.
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